Smoothstone IP Communications, a provider of cloud-based unified communications applications, has announced a new cutting edge disaster management solution, called Smoothstone DRS that is designed exclusively for Avaya Unified Communications (News - Alert) environments and is a “first of its kind” according to company officials.

DRS is an integrated suite of cloud-based call control and unified communications tools  designed to allow an enterprise to define the policies and procedures by which voice traffic will be handled during any form of outage.

Regardless of the interruption, it allows companies handle any kind of temporary disruption of calls due to local carrier, circuit or power outage, or network failure and routes calls from a company’s main inbound number to alternate office locations or through an automated attendant. Calls to individual extensions or direct inward dial numbers can also be forwarded to a user’s mobile phone or home phone, or even sent to voicemail.

Smoothstone (News - Alert) DRS is built on DRS platform, which includes a full range of highly-integrated applications, from call routing and automated attendant to voice mail and geographic-based call routing—distributing calls to backup locations based on the location of the caller. DRS is capable of delivering “five nines” availability for the companies irrespective of their Avaya (News - Alert) IP communications infrastructure. When integrated with Smoothstone’s advanced PSTN/SS7 call routing infrastructure, DRS is expected to offer an unparalleled level of redundancy and survivability to the organizations.

For companies in hurricane prone areas, this type of innovation is much needed. Catastrophe or not, IT departments, can also reap benefits from DRS when they take IP communications systems off-line for maintenance or upgrades.

“A lot of the initial interest for this technology has been in hurricane-prone areas, where DRS can take over call control in a matter of seconds. But for many IT departments, DRS will be used most often when they take IP communications systems off-line for maintenance or upgrade. It delivers on the promise of never missing another call,” James Whitemore, chief marketing officer for Smoothstone said.